Your milage may vary.
Not everyone has the same set-up as I did. Some people have XBOX-Live and World of WarCraft bills. Some people aren’t as lucky as I am to have TiVo Lifetime Service and have to pay $13 to Tivo or $8.99 to Comcast every month for their DVR’s programming info.

There are other things I could have done to lower my bill. There is a cable package that is $10 cheaper, but it only has half the channels and no HBO (which means no True Blood). I could have also given up Netflix, or dropped down to the $8.99 per month plan with no streaming access, but I wanted to save money with NO COMPROMISES in my viewing habits.

I should also note that even though my internet bill increased by $4 per month, my bandwidth went from 1.5Mb to 6.0Mb.

Everyone’s needs are diffetrent, and every setup unique. I invite you to total up your bill and put it in the comments. I would especially like to hear from others who have “cut the cable” to know if your savings were as dramatic as mine.

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10 comments so far

Kim L
on
January 26, 2009

I am in the process of cutting the Comcast cable cord. I already canceled my pay movie channels and have survived just fine. And there’s really nothing else I watch on TV that I can’t access online. So, I’ve gone the route of antennae and, since I needed a new DVD player anyway, spent a little bit extra to get an upconverting DVD/VHS recorder with a tuner.

What I’m wondering is if Comcast will allow me to continue my cable internet service? I tried switching to AT&T DSL a few months back, but had issues with my connection to work VPN so went back to Comcast.

Comcast will let you be an internet-only subscriber, but you have to jump through a thousand hoops and talk to a customer retention specialist to get your TV portion turned off, and they will remind you of the discount you get for having both… and may even offer you some more discounts (like free HBO for two months) if you stay connected.

They will say whatever it takes to keep your total bill from shrinking.

Also, if Comcast suspects you are watching TV without paying them to pipe it to you, they can throttle you, and they’ve just put a 250GB data cap on all users.

That’s 8.3GB a day. A rental DVD holds 9GB. A BluRay disk holds 25GB. Don’t expect to be streaming or downloading a lot of HD material.

How is the antenna working for you? After my experiment (52 weeks with no TV) is over, I’m considering getting a TiVo XL and recording HD-over-the-air. Free TV is hard to beat.

Sorry to hear about your DSL/VPN problem. I hear those problems are rare but incurable… unless you upgrade to business-level DSL and get a new fiber line laid, or move.

I cut the pay channels when I got the Netflix membership. I gave up VHS in 1998, and am considering selling off my DVD collection while it still has a little value. I’m a streaming/downloading fool now, but I’m hearing the siren song of over-the-air HD.

Thanks for being a pioneer in the “Cutting the cord” sense. Under pressure from my girlfriend, and trying to save $100 per month, I’m in the planning stages for canceling my cable in Fairfax, VA (COX) and going internet only.

I’m glad to hear that it’s possible without relying on bit-torrent too much. Thanks for the encouragement, keep up the good work.

Well I canceled cable about a year ago. Planed on just using netflix and hulu but comcast never came to turn the cable off. This seems to happen a lot. Now I’m moving to a new place. My question is how do you stream from your computer to your TV. Or is your computer your TV?

I cut the cable cord a few months ago. I was paying $130/month for cable and internet ($80 for cable), so I cut the cable cord (Comcast will charge you an extra $10/month because you don’t have “mulitple services” anymore, but still a savings), bought a TiVo HD to use as a tuner (still saving up for that HDTV but it works just fine going to analog) and got the Netflix 1 disc at a time with streaming. I’m getting pretty good OTA reception with an indoor antenna but I’m thinking about trying an outdoor one to get even better (right now, not a dealbreaker at all, so I’m testing out my online viewing options to see if I can leave things as is or should go for the better antenna).

Anything I can’t get on Netflix I’ve been able to find online so far, so I see no need to give Comcast $80/month for a bunch of channels I’m not watching.

We have been looking into this as well. I think that we can dump 2/3 of our “bundle” and save a bundle instead. Our land line is costing us $50/month and cable is $65/month. With a Femtocell we can go to our cell phone and with online streaming and Netflix i think we can do it. That would be $100 in our pocket / month.